Black Apples
by lostmidtranslation
Summary: The damn apple was poisoned, and Katie Bell, she realised as she collapsed down into the cold water, her head hitting the granite floor of the fountain, had just let herself in for a fairytale she could never have expected. Fratie Fairytale


_**Disclaimer: Doesn't belong to me. Blame JK Rowling. No offense intended and I don't make a profit. **_

_**Dedicated to Rosie, because she's amazing and helped me work all this out : ) **_

_**Enjoy and Review.**_

-xx-xx-xx-xx-

Draco sighed, his lips curling back into a half snarl as he thought about the task the Dark Lord had laid forth for him. _All of the Mudbloods had to die_. He hissed the words aloud through his teeth and he heard Blaise shifting in the four-poster across the room.

"Oi, Draco. Shut it, will you, it's three in the morning."

"Fuck you, Zabini."

"Charming." But he shifted back and closed the drapes again. Draco, once again, was alone in the room, fury coursing through him as he thought about the person he would like to start with.

She was a Gryffindor, so clearly off limits, with neatly plaited dark-blonde hair and big blue eyes. Typically English-rose, but he knew she was at least part Irish. Probably a lot Irish, actually, from her accent. Draco didn't like-like her, per se, but he wasn't averse to sitting there in the Great Hall and watching her as she sat, furiously scribbling at a Transfiguration essay or shouting Fred Weasley down in an argument. It was her tenacity that turned him on, he knew that Pansy wouldn't dare talk to him like that, and they were polar opposites in every other way too, but he knew if he took another step closer to her, he would be sucked in by her magnetism. He couldn't risk that.

Katie Bell had to die first. His little Mudblood Pet, as Blaise had dubbed her, was fast becoming his nuisance. He couldn't have her, obviously, and this path that the Dark Lord had set him had offered him the perfect release. If he couldn't have her, then nobody would be able to.

Especially not Fred Weasley.

No matter how much he tried, Fred Weasley could not have her. It would be losing to a blood traitor, and a ginger one at that. Draco knew Weasley wanted Bell more than anything, as well, he could see it in the way he lost every argument with her, then went up to her ten minutes later, apologised and gave her a big hug, then pulled away, or when he sat with her, forsaking his dinner to help her out with a particularly tough piece of Potions work.

It honestly sickened him.

"Oi, Blaise?" He hissed across the room, hoping his housemate would wake up and tug his four-poster curtain back across, look at him and offer him some ideas, "Blaise, what's-" He gasped and let out a shout of pain. "Fuck me!"

"Rather not, Draco." Zabini drawled from the far corner, "I'm told you're not the best of lays."

"Funny, you prick." Draco gasped through his sudden tears. "Merlin that's painful." The inner length of his forearm was burning furiously, the confused tattoo on his arm hissing and pulsating as it burned black and seared through his senses, flooding his body with fury and making his eyes blink black, tears dripping from the corners of his eyes as his skin crawled.

"What is it, Blondie?" Zabini muttered, peering at him through the darkness, his eyes tired but bright.

"It's time." Almost automatically, Draco rose from his bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt, then crept down the passageway to the Slytherin Common Room, ignoring the half-shout of 'Time for what?' that echoed down the passageway behind him.

Zabini could be bloody dense, sometimes.

-x-x-

Fred pulled his hand back, cocking it as though he was going to hit her and Alicia felt it was time to intervene. She shouted for Hermione, the only Prefect she knew could control the Weasley mania, and the bushy-haired girl came running. She didn't get too far before she realised it wasn't necessarily the Weasley boy who needed to be spoken to.

Katie Bell was fighting against his sudden grip; he was trying to hold her hand away from him now, scared that she would do exactly what it looked like he would do.

"FRED!" She shrieked, but the slap had fallen; echoing across the common room, only it wasn't him hitting her. Katie had brought her hand back in the commotion and thrown her open hand across his face. It connected harshly, the sound audible across the room. Alicia winced and looked at George for an explanation. He shrugged and turned back to the action, as though it was a sports game and he had a bet on the outcome. Knowing him as a Weasley twin, it was likely there was money on this either way.

"Fuck me, woman!" Back in the centre of the room, the slightly-older Weasley twin turned to his antagonist and looked at her for a long minute, frowning furiously, but simultaneously, and unsuccessfully hiding a half smile, "You just like punishing me." He teased, and she rose to it, bringing her hand up for round two of let's-hit-Fred-as-hard-as-we-can. "Oh, fuck me!" He said again, shielding his face with both arms crossed in front of it.

"Fuck you? Too right! You don't understand when a girl says something she's telling the truth!" She fumed, his hand reaching up to touch her cheek as he tried to calm her down. "No! Fred! I've had enough! You don't understand that stop means stop! You don't get boundaries, Fred! I've told you a million times that when I'm like this I want to be left alone and all you do-"

"I-I'm sorry, Katie, I never realised-I thought you-I-I didn't think." He dropped his voice, blushing and staring at the floor.

"You never think!" She screamed at him, "Honestly, when was the last time you thought about something honestly, something really and truly and tried to make sense of everything? Really, Fred?" She shouted, tears finding their way traitorously from her eyes and trickling down her face as she pushed past him, flushed and devastated.

"Merlin," Fred humphed as Katie stormed from the Common Room and went down to breakfast, "I only said hello-"

"You know you said more than that, Fred. Don't try and play for sympathy." George looked at his brother and pulled a face. "Seriously, bro. You should probably apologise-"

"Forget it." He sighed, "I do it all the time and she never even... all we do is argue." He sighed, folding his arms and focussing his furious gaze upon the floor. "There's nothing else we seem to do; it's like there's nothing more to our relationship." There was a long silence and Alicia sat up slightly, as though something had just clicked in her brain, then she looked up at Fred, shaking her head.

"You know she loves you." She said softly, "She only really likes arguing with you because she gets to hug you after it-"

"Yes, of course, Alicia, that's exactly the reason she beats the crap out of me and yells at me and-Oh, what's the use?" Fred threw himself down onto the cushions, snarling angrily and throwing his hands up in the air for no reason. He growled and Alicia shook her head furiously, bored of their arguments and tired of being the one to tell Fred how Katie felt, time and time again, when he clearly wasn't interested in listening to it.

"Bugger it," George said after a long minute of silence, rising from the comfy armchair in the corner and earning a confused look from his girlfriend as he did so.

"Where're you going, George?"

"Can't be sitting here watching _him _whinge for the rest of your life, can I?" He shrugged, "Care to accompany me to breakfast, Lycia?" She grinned and took his outstretched hand. "Let's see if we can't find Katie-Kat as well, she could do with some food. She's been looking skinny recently-"

"Shut up!" Fred shouted after them, "She's naturally slim, but she's curvy... so-_shit_!" George turned just in time to see Fred bury his head in his hands and laughed at his brother's misfortune. "Wait up! I'm coming with you!" He rose and ran after them, following them down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

-xx-xx-xx-

Draco was in the Hall as she strode into the room. He was sitting, staring blankly at the wall opposite him, the place she usually sat as he heard the low sniff from the far corner, right at the back of the hall, away from the teachers' table and as far in the background as possible. Though he knew there was nothing he could do about what was going to happen later on today, in fact just after breakfast, he couldn't help but feel bad as he looked over at her and saw the tears tracking down her face.

"Are you alright?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, the blush on his face frighteningly hot as he shuddered and got to his feet. There were only two of them in the room, no teachers, no students, it was barely seven in the morning but the shouting match of the day had already come and gone. He found himself on his feet, conjuring a tissue and holding it out to her.

"What do you care?" She sniffed, locking eyes with him and looking away after a second. "I'm a Gryffindor. Don't you like seeing us sad?"

"I don't like seeing... pretty girls crying." He let himself say the words, and internally cringed as she looked up at him, clearly fighting a laugh. "What? I compliment you and you find it ridiculous."

"No, no," She giggled still, and Draco fought back the smile that wanted to surface at the sound of her laugh. "It's not that. You've been... well, I suppose you've been... _nice_ to me, and I just find it funny," She blushed and looked away, and Draco wanted to touch the porcelain skin that sat before him, stained pink by the blush coursing through her skin.

"Oh, right." He nodded again, pulling an apple from his pocket. He had seen her eating these every day, after breakfast, but thankfully for him, this morning there weren't any on the Gryffindor House Table. "Erm, I don't know if you want this..." She took it from his outstretched hand and surveyed it suspiciously.

"It's not poisoned, is it?" She quirked an eyebrow and he shook his head violently, though he knew that only fifteen minutes before, he had dropped it into a cauldron filled with a deadly draught of his own production. She laughed as he looked at her, his eyes wide, "I was joking, Malfoy, but thank you. Really. I'd never have come over to get them, if you'd not..." She blushed and looked away, setting it on the table in front of her.

"That's alright, Bell. Don't expect treatment like this again."

"As if I would, Draco." She said his first name softly, almost as though she was afraid of him, "I wouldn't expect anything from you." She continued to eat, furiously, as he turned back to sit at the Slytherin table and eat with his back to her. She stared at him for a second then glanced at the apple and decided it was safe – it was green, it looked alright. She didn't think anything would be wrong with it...

She pushed the apple away after a few seconds, watching it as it came to settle by her spoon, rocking easily into the small space between her plate and the cutlery. It was almost hypnotic, and she liked to get her five-a-day early...

Katie sighed as she picked it up and looked towards the doorway to the hall, seeing Fred, George and Alicia coming through it, she rose from her seat, stuck the apple into her pocket and went to sit outside on the edge of the fountain in the Castle courtyard, trailing her fingers in the water, and telling herself it was simply because it was a nice day and she didn't want to waste it, but knowing in her heart it was because he would be in there. He would be sitting looking at the food in front of him, ignoring her. He would be sitting there, being mad and upset and she didn't want them to be like that anymore. She was tired of having to sit there and then shout at him, and this morning had been the proverbial straw that had proverbially broken the proverbial camel's proverbial back.

He had roused her from the seat she had taken in the corner about eleven hours before, and almost immediately launched into complaints about McGonagall and her treachery about Harry... blah, something Firebolt... Hermione and Ron blah. She had stopped listening ten seconds into the whole conversation, but it was only because she'd requested ten minutes to get herself together, to gather her thoughts and consider things, go upstairs and get changed, and for Merlin's sake, who wants to get woken up at five-to-six on a damn Saturday morning?

And she'd told him. As usual he'd taken it the wrong way, but damnit, she was sick of having to argue with him just to make up. It was hurting her more than anything and she had recruited Alicia to help her out, to help her explain to Fred that maybe she did care more for him than this, and that if he'd just calm down a little bit, she'd be able to handle him. He stressed her out and he knew it, but it didn't stop her feeling things for him that she neither understood nor wanted to understand. She just wanted to enjoy it while it lasted and maybe have him around a little longer. She didn't believe in true love, honestly, she had seen enough films and read enough books to know that all of it was rubbish, that it didn't ever happen in reality, but if it genuinely ever happened, if she somehow ended up in the midst of all that poisoned-apple-fairy-godmother-bullshit, she'd love it to be Fred to rescue her, no matter how awkward it would be.

Laughing silently to herself, she pulled the shining apple from her pocket, held it up to the light and giggled, feeling stupid for even taking it from the Slytherin boy in the Hall.

"Poisoned apple bullshit." She laughed, that tiny bit of happiness holding her together and fighting back the tears she wanted to cry over Fred Weasley for just a few seconds longer. She swallowed and the burn got the better of her, two tears tracing down her cheeks for the second time that morning. She wiped one away with the sleeve of her robe and brought the apple up to her lips with the other hand.

She slowly bit into the green skin of the apple, registering the over-sweetness and the slight tangy taste that she had been taught to recognise as a poison as total irony. Ridiculous, or not, as it seemed, Malfoy was a liar. The damn apple _was _poisoned, and Katie Bell, she realised as she collapsed down into the cold water, her head hitting the granite floor of the fountain, had just let herself in for a fairytale she could never have expected.

xx—xx—xx

Malfoy watched her leave the Hall, her eyes clouded with tears and her face flushed and embarrassed. She shoved past the Weasley brothers, only one of them turning around to look at her, to watch her as she made her way out of the castle and off to somewhere... it didn't matter where to Draco, as long as she ended up dead in the end.

"What's happened to her-" Fred Weasley muttered, shaking his hair out of his eyes and looking up, meeting Draco's eyes. Fear and fury flashed through his glare, and Draco, though he'd never cower before a blood traitor, had to fight the urge to flinch under his stare. "You-"

Draco rose before Fred could take a step toward him, swiftly flourishing his wand as though he was simply playing with it. Fred was older than him, but he wouldn't risk a fight with a fifth year, the useless bastard.

"I'm nothing to do with it," Draco said softly, as he straightened up and walked away. Fred followed his gaze, "She came in crying, she left crying. Not my problem," He muttered softly and quickly stepped from the room, leaving the twins in the corner, walking as fast as he could but feeling the sweat breaking out on his palms as he strode towards the Slytherin dungeons, plotting his next move, his next muggleborn. Granger

He'd killed.

Surely she was dead by now.

He'd killed. The hardest one was over, but there were so many more to go.

-x-x-x-

Hagrid was wondering why the fountain didn't seem to be working. The streams of water seemed too weak, too pointless for the fountain to be working properly; it seemed too... dirty for the fountain to be functioning.

He saw the robes floating on the surface of the water before he could react to the shout from his class down by his hut. He took three strides back to the fountain, wondering if it was simply a joke, something the Slytherin students had done for a laugh, or whether someone was genuinely in trouble.

"Katie!" He recognised the fluidly braided hair, the neat style, and the fair skin contrasting furiously against the Gryffindor-scarlet-tie and the black jumper. "Bell, wake up, ye'll be gettin' chills if yer in there fer too lo-" The blood in the water let him know something was wrong.

Her hand was clamped around an apple which didn't even have a bite out of it, just broken bruises on the green skin, black juice dripping from the wounds in the flesh of it. She felt cold as Hagrid lifted her from the water, soaking wet and unresponsive. He lifted her into his arms and sprinted up the staircase in the Entrance Hall, practically throwing the sixth-year girl onto one of Madame Pomfrey's hospital gurneys.

She shrieked when she saw the girl, lying freezing on the now sodden, snow white sheets, apple still oozing black juice and stuck between her fingers. Madame Pomfrey inspected the fruit stuck in Katie's grip and let out another scream, panic ripping through her features.

"Get Minerva," Poppy Pomfrey hissed, Hagrid complied quickly, almost sprinting down two floors and knocking on the door to the Transfiguration classroom, still breathing hard as Professor McGonagall answered the door, stern-faced and furious.

"What is it, Rubeus?"

"It's... Well, you need to get to the Hospital Wing, Professor."

"What is it, Hagrid?"

"Gryffindor student, Professor... She's in dire straits-"

-x-x-x-x-

Fred looked up at the door when the harried knocking started, furious he had been broken out of his reverie by the continuous noise. He frowned as he saw Hagrid standing there, and his heart stopped as the words, "Hospital wing," and "Gryffindor student," were spoken aloud, amongst other profanities lost between the wiry hairs of his beard. Fred could've sworn it had grown even more wild and tangled since even yesterday.

His thoughts jumped to Katie, but he knew she was fine, that there was nothing that could shut up the arrogant, furious, Irish girl who interested, confused, despised and attracted him so much.

"Class dismissed," McGonagall's voice filtered through his ears and he brightened slightly. If it meant a cancelled lesson, Fred would sacrifice the well-being of Lavender Brown or some other Gryffin-whore any day.

He gathered his things and followed his brother from the room, wandering back up to the Common Room, only stopping off at the Great Hall to pick up some Jam sandwiches and to try to find Katie, to see if she'd calmed down at all since breakfast. She was nowhere to be seen, and Fred supposed she'd be hiding in her dormitory, like she usually did when they'd had a fight.

He shrugged lightly when Alicia came back down, saying that Katie wasn't upstairs, she wasn't in the Common Room or the Gryffindor Dormitories at all. He was trying to play it off, to pretend the worry that was quickly building up in his chest wasn't there at all. He shuddered when George and his girlfriend weren't looking, looking out at the window, hoping she had gone flying, but at the same time, he was terrified. It was raining out. He didn't want her to get ill. He didn't want her hurt at all.

--xx-xx-xx—

_Her lips were blue. _

"Professor McGonagall, this poison is synthesised. It's student made, definitely,"

_She looked like she was crying, her face streaked with light blue tears, seeping from her eyes._

"Madame Pomfrey, do you know of a cure?"

_Leanne watched from the bed in the corner, saw them lifting her between beds, and saw them taking the apple from her hands._

"I'm not sure what's going on. She's not responding, and it's not in the books I've got."

_Poppy Pomfrey looked thoroughly out of her depth. _

"Anything, anything at all?"

_She didn't respond to a thing they tried. Professor Snape spent a long time with the apple juice, looking at it. Studying it._

"I wonder if there was irony in their use of the apple to do it." Snape's silky tones rang across Pomfrey's office as he looked up and half-snorted. "She's a muggleborn, is she not?"

"Yes, Severus, but I don't understand how her provenance would have an effect on the modus operandi of this... _murderer."_

"Is it not a... muggle fairy tale though, a princess eats a poisoned apple and..."

"Severus, that's ridi-" McGonagall started, her face disgusted.

"That's ingenious!" Poppy Pomfrey jolted into awareness of the situation. It all made sense when she looked at it like that, "But we're dealing in true love, and... heartbreak and who knows what could happen with that?!"

"Is it not worth trying though?" Snape asked softly, looking through the glass at the girl in the now-empty hospital wing. "She may... return from limbo, I suppose," He whispered. "Would you not want that?"

"Where would we start?" McGonagall asked softly, looking around at the others in the room.

"Well, who do we know that spends most of his life with Bell?" Snape muttered, as though it was obvious and McGonagall needed her head seeing to.

"Weasley, Weasley, and Jordan." Madame Pomfrey replied immediately.

"Doesn't George... isn't he with Spinnet? And Jordan's been with Johnson since the Yule Ball. She doesn't get on with many of the others, though she went out with Roger Davies once, I think..." McGonagall said after a moment's consideration. "We could try Weasley."

"Fred Weasley?" Snape asked, almost aghast at the suggestion. "But they argue near-constantly-"

"Ah, but Severus, you always hurt the one you love."

--xx--xx—

Fred was definitely worried now.

Honestly. Where was she? It wasn't like her to disappear like this. She never... just upped and left like this. It was so unlike Katie.

"Fred, sit down."

"Where is she, Angie?" She didn't respond, so Fred turned to Lee Jordan for a second opinion. "Do you know?" Lee shrugged and Fred wondered if there genuinely was a conspiracy against him, whether people were attempting to keep Katie from him to deliberately shred his nerves and worry the hell out of him for fun.

He looked up as the portrait hole swung closed, looking at McGonagall almost disappointedly as she stepped smartly through the gap in the brickwork.

"Professor, have you seen Katie Bell?" Her expression fell, and Fred's heart plummeted in that single second. A million thoughts ran through his head and it was a completely new sensation. The thought that she could be hurt; she could be the one lying in the hospital wing in dire straits, she could be dying...

"I came to speak to you, actually, Mr Weasley." She breathed out heavily and Fred was struck by the hollowness of her words.

"Is she alright?" He said softly, "I need to know if Katie's alright!"

He didn't realise he was shouting until McGonagall raised her hand and his voice was gone. The world seemed silent, she wasn't silence. Katie wasn't silence to him. She was life, and fury and violence, and heat, and passion, and desperation to get closer and... Fred needed her. He loved her, he knew it, because he didn't understand how he could hate her for hating him, for the arguments, but still need to be close to her, to find out everything about her, document it, remember it, use it, love it... to become it.

"Mr. Weasley." McGonagall was trying her best to stay level headed, but inside, she was crumbling. She had never seen such desperation in such frightened times. Fred looked on the verge of tears and she didn't know why. "Katie Bell... is in trouble. Her life is in the balance. I need to ask you a few questions. We know you know her better than anyone. We need you to..." She paled and bowed her head. Fred wasn't sure if he'd ever seen her looking so awkward or so nervous before, but he understood why she was like this. He wanted to collapse on the floor and cry.

"What is it, professor?"

"Katie needs you." She breathed out, "Fred... we wondered, who would..." She turned on her heel and Fred lost her words.

"If it'll help Katie," Fred murmured, "I'll do anything."

--xx-xx—

He didn't expect to be sitting here, at the end of her bed, watching the silvery-blue tears course down her cheeks like beautiful makeup, a side-effect of the black juice collecting from the apple resting on a saucer on the bedside table.

"You want... you want me to kiss her?" He managed to stutter, though his hands were wrapped around hers, holding them tight and not letting go. "But why?"

"It's a theory; we think we need intimate contact to break the spell." Madame Pomfrey said to him, he nodded at her and brushed the hair back from his eyes.

He was panicking on the inside, worried it wouldn't work; terrified she would be left for dead if his lips couldn't do the magic they were supposed to, if he failed her... he didn't know what he would do without her. He really didn't have a clue.

He looked around the hospital wing, knowing he was alone but wondering if anybody was watching him. From the corner of his eye, he caught movement from behind the blinds in the windows of Pomfrey's office, blushing as he realised McGonagall was watching through a gap in the blinds, and he could almost make out the slimy hair of Snape watching through the glass panel on the door. He shuddered and turned his attention back to Katie, his face burning brightly with embarrassment now.

He leaned over her lips, tried to avoid looking her in the eye but still dropped her hands and brought his palm up to touch her cheek as he let out the breath he didn't realise he'd been holding, fear making his hands shake as he gently ran his fingers across her lips.

"Please... let this bring you back." He breathed, closing his eyes and lightly touching his lips to hers.

She tasted sweet, but her lips were cold, there was nothing radiating from her, no life, no passion, and Fred pulled back after a second, wondering how he was going to walk away from her, leave her lying there, on her own. He bit his bottom lip, sat back down in the chair beside her bed and buried his head into the mattress and sheets beside her thigh.

He felt her leg twitch, but he was imagining it, he knew, there were no muscle spasms against a poison this strong. He laid a hand on her thigh but didn't bother to look up as somebody slapped it, hard. He didn't feel it though. He wondered if there was anything he would feel at all in the near future.

"Fuck off, you ginger pervert!" His head snapped up and he came face to face with Katie Bell, who was grinning at him like a lunatic, wiping her eyes almost violently, "Er," She looked at her hands, streaked with blue from her poison-induced-tears, "Why'm I crying blue?"

Fred couldn't take his eyes from hers, but as she watched, tears formed in them, and he blinked hard, trying to brush them away. He had thrown his arms around her before she could question him, and almost immediately his lips were pressed against hers, practically squashing her back against the mattress, she whimpered and hit him on the arm, trying to prise him from her.

"Wh-what are you doing, Fred?"

"You're alive, Katie!" He managed to yelp, but before anything further could be said, Snape came bursting from the office in the corner, looking... Fred couldn't quite place the emotion, but he assumed it was a form of happiness, because his trademark slime-smirk was plastered on his face.

"Ah! Miss Bell, you're alive, can you tell me who gave you the apple?"

"Erm..." Katie considered it for a long minute, "I know it was a Slytherin, I remember the tie, but... i couldn't place him again..." Fred knew she was lying, but he didn't understand why. Katie bowed her head. "Professors, could Fred take me back to the common room?"

"Erm, Katie, i doubt that's adviseable, i mean, you've just been through a near death experience, Fred's kiss only saved your life by chance, we weren't sure if he really would be your true love-"

"What?" Both teenagers turned to look at Madame Pomfrey, "True Love?" They said simultaneously, "No... No way!"

"Yes, i'm afraid so. We took the idea from a muggle fairytale, that of umm... Snow White, i think it was..."

"Poisoned Apple." Katie murmured, looking at the fruit on her bedside table, "Handsome prince..." She glanced down at Fred's hand, the fingers of which were currently twisting and locking with hers, sending the usual electric currents through her skin, though they felt as though their strength had increased a million fold in the last few minutes. "And me." She looked up and locked eyes with Fred.

"Nobody else, Katie." He grinned weakly and she drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them to her.

"Will you have me, Fred? I'm not exactly spectacular."

"As though i'd want anyone else." He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her hand, shifting to sit on the bed beside her. He leaned closer to her and kissed her cheek, leaning over to murmur in her ear, "You know Malfoy did it."

"I want... I want to scare him. He thinks he's won." She replied softly, turning her head to touch her lips to his cheek. "But... you won, Fred."

-x-x-

Ten days later, Katie stepped from the hospital wing with Fred's arm steadying her as they walked together. She stopped, almost embarrassed as she made her way through the corridors, down to the Great Hall, Fred creating a path through the students for her to follow as though she was someone special.

She was lucky. Lucky to have him and lucky to be alive. She sat down opposite Lee Jordan and Alicia Spinnet, catching Draco Malfoy's eye as he made his way along the Slytherin table, his face draining of any remnant of colour as she looked into his eyes.

"Ka-Katie, are you alright?" Fred's arm tightened around her as he murmured the words into her neck, she nodded, tight lipped.

"I'll be back in a minute."

Shakily, she rose, pulling an apple from the tray on the table as she did so. Stalking around the table and walking straight over to the Slytherin opposite, she silently held his gaze, bent over the table, facing him, and placed the small, green apple on the table in front of him, turning away without a word and rejoining the Gryffindor table, leaving Draco staring at the small green fruit in front of him.

_--xx--xx--xx--xx--_

_Hope you enjoyed, _

_Constructive criticism welcome_

_Review with any thoughts_

_Love ya_

_xxx_


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